About OzLabs

Introduction

OzLabs is a group of Free Software developers and their associates, originally formed
in Canberra, Australia. The original incarnation of the group is notable for
being one of the first commercial labs set up to work on Linux and Linux support. OzLabs
is the largest and most respected collection of Free Software developers in
Australia. Members of this group are responsible for projects including:

Blemings was tasked with establishing the Australian section of Linuxcare's global
technical support team and, in early 2000, he hired ANU graduate David Gibson
and Apache web server
developer Martin Pool, who would later
author distcc
and Bazaar-ng. Sales Manager extraordinaire Martin Nightingale joined
the OzLabs team, and former ANU academic and system
administrator Martin Schwenke was hired to
provide technical support within the Canberra region.

Soon after this, Linuxcare rounded out its development and professional services team by
adding Linux Standard Base developer Chris
Yeoh, SPARC Linux maintainer Anton
Blanchard, later to be a PowerPC64 Linux maintainer, and Samba team
member Luke Leighton. OzLabs also gained its first remote
members, both working from Adelaide,
Australia: FreeBSD/NetBSD hacker Greg Lehey,
author of Vinum, and GNU toolchain hacker Alan Modra. The team was patiently watched over
by office administrator Tracy Whatman.

In mid-2000 Blemings became manager of the Linuxcare's Australian operation. Later in 2000
Nightingale left to lead VA Linux's Australian division, and Leighton left OzLabs and
returned to the United Kingdom.

Several members of OzLabs lectured or guest lecturered at
the Australian National University over the years,
adding weight to the ANUs already strong UNIX and Linux curriculum.

Prior to the widespread uptake
of broadband internet in Canberra, OzLabs provided a Linux CD downloading and
burning service, which gave students and members of the public access to Linux
distributions such as Debian, Mandrake and
Red Hat, without the
tedium of sneaker
netting thousands of floppy disks. The CDs were provided in exchange for
biscuits, Tim Tams were
generally favoured and were sometimes used in late
night Tim Tam
Slam binges.

In early 2001, after instability at Linuxcare, most OzLabs members took jobs elsewhere and
Linuxcare closed its Australian division.

VA Linux, Hewlett Packard, Snap, Canonical, Google

After leaving Linuxcare, OzLabs founder Andrew Tridgell joined
Martin Nightingale at VA Linux, along with Martin Pool and
Tim Potter. However, approximately 6 months later VA Linux
closed its Australian division. Martin Pool and Tim Potter joined
Hewlett Packard, while Andrew Tridgell joined Snap. In 2005, Martin Pool
took a job with Ubuntu's
commercial arm Canonical.
In 2012, Martin Pool left Canonical to take a job
with Google.

IBM

2001

Within a few months of leaving Linuxcare, most of the OzLabs
team (Anton Blanchard, Hugh Blemings, David Gibson, Greg Lehey, Paul Mackerras, Alan Modra,
Stephen Rothwell, Rusty Russell, Martin Schwenke, Chris Yeoh) had
joined IBM's Linux Technology Center to work on
PowerPC Linux and associated projects, with Hugh Blemings as
manager.

The team built up a close relationship with other Linux
hackers inside IBM, most notably those working on Linux on
PowerPC
in Austin, Texas
and Rochester, Minnesota. Over the
years many of these people have been considered part of the
extended OzLabs team, including Ryan Grimm, Olof Johansson,
Nathan Lynch, Jake Moilanen, Sonny Rao, Will Schmidt, Joel
Schopp, Amos Waterland and Mike Wolf.

2002

Greg Lehey left IBM in mid-2002.

2003

Andrew Tridgell joined IBM's Almaden research team, working from
the Canberra office.

The team was officially joined by systems
administrator Keith
Matthews, a long term IBM systems engineer who had
already been helping to support the team's Power hardware.

Jeremy Kerr, who began
as an intern hacking on
nfsim,
also joined and wound up doing many things, mostly kernel
hacking, including becoming SPU FS maintainer for the Cell
Linux port.

Linux on Power hacker
and Yaboot
author Benjamin
Herrenschmidt also joined, eventually succeeding
Paul Mackerras as head Linux on Power maintainer in 2009.